Consumer Feature: Which Is the World's Largest Truck?

The World's largest mining trucks

In the world of mining trucks, there are big ones, bigger ones, and the biggest ones. For the past few years, the largest trucks have been in the 360- to 400-ton class. The three trucks that lead that class are the Caterpillar 797, the Terex 5500, and the truck featured here, the Liebherr T 282B. They all have very different engineering. But the big question is, well, bigness. Which of these behemoths rules the planet as the world's largest truck?

So they're all close in size--the Terex is the tallest, widest, and longest. And, when empty, the Terex punishes the scales with 478,000 pounds of mass, the Cat 560,000 pounds, and the Liebherr is somewhere around 539,000 pounds.

Of course, all three are massively powerful (the Cat's V-24 delivers 3400 horsepower, the Liebherr's 18-cylinder Cummins diesel has 3500 horsepower churning a generator, and the Terex runs 2700 horsepower from its Cummins V-16.